Bridal Shower Planning Checklist, Excel and Google Sheets, Guest List Budget Tracker

You type one date. All 34 deadlines fill themselves in.

A printed bridal shower checklist tells you "eight weeks before: book the
venue" and leaves you to do that arithmetic thirty-four more times. This one
carries the weeks on each task and works the due date out from your shower
date. Move the date and every deadline moves with it.

WHAT YOU TYPE
- The shower date.
- What the hosts are spending between them.

That is the setup. Open the Checklist tab and the dates are already there.

WHAT IS INSIDE
- Checklist — 34 tasks in the order they need doing, from agreeing the date
with the bride to assigning someone to write down who gave what. Each has a
due date, a Who column, and a status that turns OVERDUE by itself.
- Guest List — 100 rows. Invites, RSVPs, plus-ones, gifts and thank-yous.
The head count adds plus-ones automatically, because that is the number the
caterer is asking for.
- Budget — 13 categories, planned against actual, with the difference and
the running total worked out.
- Read Me First — days to go, how far through the checklist you are, who is
coming, who has not replied, and what is left to spend.

FOR THE HOST, NOT THE BRIDE
This is the maid of honour's file. It assumes you have never done this before
and that the timeline is the part nobody tells you. The tasks are in the order
they actually need doing, and only three are genuinely date-critical — the
quickstart says which three and why.

WORKS IN BOTH
Excel and Google Sheets. Drag it into Google Drive and every formula, dropdown
and colour carries over, then share it with your co-hosts so you are all
looking at one list instead of three group chats.

TWELVE WEEKS OR SIX
The checklist counts back from twelve, which is comfortable. Six is normal and
four is doable — change the weeks in column B rather than deleting tasks, and
the dates rearrange themselves. A compressed timeline puts several things in
one week, and you want to see that rather than discover it.

WHY THE GREY CELLS ARE LOCKED
Every calculated cell is protected, because the fastest way to break a shared
checklist is for one person to overwrite a formula and nobody to notice for a
month. Type in the yellow cells. No password is set — you can unlock any sheet
if you want to.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD
Delivered the moment you buy. Nothing ships, and nothing is printed for you —
this is a spreadsheet, and the whole point is that it does arithmetic paper
cannot.

Questions get a real answer from a person, at hello [!at] gablepath.com.

AI DISCLOSURE
The spreadsheet's structure, formulas and wording were designed and built with
the help of AI tools, then tested and checked by a person before listing. The
cover and preview images are generated graphics, not photographs.